The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (11 page)

On 2 July 1932, Peter Kürten went to his death at a guillotine erected in the yard of the Klingelputz Prison. Kürten expressed his last earthly desire on the way to the yard: ‘Tell me,’ he asked the prison psychiatrist, ‘after my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own
blood gushing from the stump of my neck?’ He savoured this thought for a while, and then added ‘That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.’

Miyazaki’s premature birth left him with deformed hands, which were permanently gnarled and fused directly to the wrists, necessitating him to move his entire forearm in order to rotate the hand. As a result of this deformity, he was ostracised at school and consequently kept to himself.

Miyazaki would turn out to be a murderer influenced by pornography and anime. As a teenager, he became a loner who devoured fantasy and comic books. Highly sexed, he moved into the world of child pornography, collecting videos. He also had a craving for horror films.

He committed his first murder at the age of 26 and his first victim was four-year-old Mari Konno, on 22 August 1988. He took her into a park, photographed her and strangled her. He then undressed her and left her naked body in the hills near his home, taking her clothing with him. He allowed the corpse to decompose. He later returned to the body and chopped off the hands and feet, which he then took home and kept in his wardrobe. These were recovered on his arrest. He charred the remaining bones in his furnace, ground them into powder and sent
them to the victim’s family in a box, along with several of her teeth, photos of her clothes and a postcard reading: ‘Mari. Cremated. Bones. Investigate. Prove.’

Undetected, he went on to kill again. In October the same year, he saw Masami Yoshizawa, aged seven, walking by herself. He enticed the girl into his car and drove to the location of his first murder, where the skeletal remains of his first victim still laid undiscovered. He strangled the little girl and then he sexually abused the body, taking the girl’s clothing with him when he left the scene.

On 12 December, Miyazaki murdered another four-year-old girl, Erika Nanba. Again enticing her into his car, he photographed her before strangling her and dumping her body. For the next few months he kept a low profile. He believed he might have been seen at the murder location. In the interim period, Erika’s body was found and witnesses described the car they had seen in the area. The police also learnt that each of the families of the three murdered girls had received strange phone calls: always, the caller remained silent. They also received gruesome postcards with letters cut from magazines to form words such as ‘cold’ and ‘death’.

On 6 June 1989, Miyazaki abducted Ayako Nomoto, aged five, from a park after he’d taken photographs of her. Having strangled the girl, he took the body home. Then he dismembered the corpse, consumed some of the flesh and disposed of the remains in a cemetery. The body was soon discovered and quickly identified. He then made his first mistake. In July 1989, he approached two sisters and lured one away. The other ran home to get help. Their father went to where Miyazaki had last been seen and caught him in the act of photographing the child’s genitals. At the same time, the police arrived as he ran to his car. When questioned, he confessed to killing the four children. In the end, Miyazaki was found to have multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia, but was nevertheless deemed sane. He was
sentenced to death by hanging. Following an appeal, that sentence was upheld early in 2006. He was finally executed by hanging on 17 June 2008.

Vladimir Bratislav’s reign of terror started in 1997 in Lysva, a town in the mid-Urals with a population today of 65,000 inhabitants. He stalked the parks and nightclubs, and in March 1997 he raped and killed his first victim. One week later, he struck again. This time, his victim was a woman who was jogging in the park, early in the morning. He overpowered her and raped her, and bit her breasts, before eventually strangling her. Bratislav was the son of a prosperous working manager who, ironically, offered a reward to anyone who could give any information about the case. Bratislav’s brother was a member of the Russian civil army, the militia. Vladimir sometimes went along with his brother and other policemen in search of the serial killer. However, between March and July he committed two more murders in similar fashion.

On the night of 28 July 1997, Bratislav took his fourth victim, Elena Lyzhina, who had made the mistake of making eye contact with him. He waited for her, raped her and then savagely attacked her eyes in a vicious frenzy which left her permanently blind. On 4 August, he struck again, laying in wait for Olga Kosenko until she left a nightclub early in the morning. She was later found
raped and strangled. His next two victims were women he knew. On 17 August, he started attacking 18-year-old Anna Marakulina from behind, until he realised that he knew her. At first, he tried to make his attack seem like a joke, but she didn’t believe him, so he raped her and beat her about the head until she was dead. Five days later, he killed another girl he knew, 17-
year-old
Maria Shetsova. Again, he waited outside a night club and then suggested they go for a walk. In a nearby park, he overpowered and strangled her. He bit her breasts and pushed a wooden stick into her mouth. One week later, he successfully attacked Alvira Kanzeparova. He raped and strangled her and tore out her eyes. However, his next intended victim would lead to his arrest.

On 10 June 1998, he attacked Natalya Mezentseva, but for some strange reason, instead of killing her, he only took her handbag and ran off. Natalya recognised him and called the police. At first, they thought it had been nothing more than a theft, but several days later, another woman was assaulted in the park in similar circumstances and severely beaten. When Natalya drove with some police officers around the park, she saw Bratislav, recognised him, and he was arrested.

When questioned, Bratislav admitted the murders and told police he had committed many more than the 10 he was subsequently charged with. He claimed that he only wanted to rob his victims of their jewellery, though he never actually sold any. He said he had to kill them once they had seen his face. He could not explain the fact that he didn’t sell the jewellery. He also claimed that he raped and mutilated his victims to distract the police. He said that he removed their eyes to ensure that they would not identify him. He raped and killed only those women who wouldn’t cooperate. Psychiatrists have since concluded that his atrocities stemmed from a humiliating sexual experience in his teenage years. When he was 14, an older woman rejected him, and as a result he couldn’t sustain an erection. At trial he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Andrei Chikatilo (b. 1936) had a traumatic childhood. His older brother died in a famine and the body had been cannibalised by starving neighbours. During World War II, Chikatilo had many fantasies involving leading German captives into the woods and executing them, a scenario that would later have parallels with his murders.

If the grisly death of his brother were not bad enough, Chikatilo grew up short-sighted and half-blind, and suffered from a sexual dysfunction that began in adolescence and rendered him periodically impotent. Though he married in the early 1960s and fathered two children, Chikatilo persisted in believing that he had been blinded and castrated from birth, a condition that later fuelled morbid fantasies of violent revenge.

His first sexual encounter came when he was 15. He jumped on a young girl and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating as she struggled in his grasp. This incident helped to foster in him a lifelong association between sex and violent aggression.

In 1978, at the age of 42, Chikatilo committed his first documented murder. On 22 December, he lured a nine-year-old girl to an old shed and attempted to rape her. When the girl struggled, he stabbed her to death, inflicting 22 wounds on her body. He ejaculated during the process of knifing the child. He threw her body into a river, where she was found on Christmas Eve. From then on, he was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death. Russian justice was swift but often inaccurate. A young man, Alexsandr Kravchenko, a paroled sex offender, was arrested and later tried and executed for this particular murder.

Chikatilo did not murder again until 1982. His next victim was 17-year-old Larisa Tkachenko, who was cutting class in Rostov when Chikatilo approached her and persuaded her to join him in the nearby woods for sex. She made the grave mistake of laughing at his failure to perform, whereupon Chikatilo strangled her, biting at her throat, arms and breasts. He bit off
one of her nipples and swallowed it in a frenzy then forced a large stick into her vagina.

Chikatilo claimed his third victim on 12 June 1982.
Twelve-year
-old Lyuba Biryuk was lured from the village of Zaplavskaya. He stabbed her 40 times in the woods, and her wounds included mutilation of the eyes, which would become a standard Chikatilo trademark. More than a year elapsed before her skeletal remains were found in July 1983. In the meantime, Chikatilo claimed three more victims, including his first male victim, nine-year-old Oleg Podzhidaev. While Oleg’s body was never found, we know from Chikatilo’s subsequent confession that the child was emasculated; his genitals were carried from the murder scene, in what became another signature of Andrei Chikatilo’s crimes.

During that year Chikatilo killed seven times. He established a pattern of approaching runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations and enticing them to leave. He took his victims on a short journey to a nearby forest each time before murdering them. By this time, he had also started to take out the eyes of his victims as well as mutilating the bodies and removing organs.

In June 1983, he murdered four more adult females – prostitutes or homeless women who could be lured with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo usually attempted intercourse with these victims, but was often unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury, especially if the woman mocked his inability to perform. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. The child victims were of both sexes and Chikatilo would lure them away with his friendly, talkative manner by promising them toys or sweets. By this time, the police had found six bodies but their attempts to apprehend the killer had failed.

On 22 February 1984, Chikatilo was charged with stealing a roll of linoleum from his workplace. Seven months later, with that case still pending, he was arrested for licentious behaviour in public, after policemen watched him accosting women at the
Rostov bus station. Chikatilo was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment on that charge, but he remained in jail for the next three months, while detectives questioned him about the murders. Cleared of suspicion when his blood type (A) inexplicably failed to match the semen found on the bodies, Chikatilo was finally convicted of the linoleum theft in December 1984. He was sentenced to a year in jail, but a sympathetic judge gave him credit for time served since his September arrest and Chikatilo was freed on the spot.

By the end of 1984, police believed the same killer was responsible for at least 24 murders. The police posted extra patrols and plainclothes officers at many public transport stops. Chikatilo found new work and kept a low profile. He did not kill again until August 1985, when he murdered two women in separate incidents. He committed no further murders until May 1988 when, on a business trip to the Ukraine, he killed a young boy whose body was discovered in the woods not far from a train station. He had been buggered and his orifices were stuffed with dirt. He also bore numerous knife wounds and a blow to the skull, and his penis had been cut off. Chikatilo went on to kill again in July and September of that year.

In 1988, Chikatilo resumed his killing, this time away from the Rostov area where he knew there was a large police presence. He murdered a woman in Krasny-Sulin in April 1989 and went on to kill another eight people that year, including two victims in Shakhty. Again, there was a long period between killings, then he murdered seven boys and two women between January and November 1990. The discovery of one of the bodies near Leskhoz station led to increased police patrols. On 6 November 1990, Chikatilo killed and mutilated Sveta Korostik. He was stopped by police returning from the murder scene but allowed to go. However, a report on this suspicious encounter returned Chikatilo’s name to the investigation. On 20 November 1990, after police again observed his suspicious behaviour, he was arrested and interrogated, finally confessing his crimes.

Between 30 November and 5 December 1990, Chikatilo confessed to 56 murders. Three of the victims had been buried and could not be found or identified, so Chikatilo was not charged with these crimes. The number of crimes Chikatilo confessed to shocked the police, who had listed only 36 killings in their investigation. A number of victims had not been linked to the others because they were murdered far from Chikatilo’s other killing fields, while others had not been linked because they were buried and not found until Chikatilo led the police to their shallow graves subsequent to his arrest.

After being deemed sane, Chikatilo finally went to trial on 14 April 1992. During the trial, he was famously kept in a cage in the centre of the courtroom; it was constructed for his own protection from the relatives of the deceased. The trial ended in July and sentencing was adjourned until 15 October when he was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death. His execution took place on 15 February 1994. He was shot in the back of the head with a single bullet.

In July 2003, citizens of Moscow were gripped by fear when, in a short space of time, 10 women were murdered. By September there were two more murders, fuelling anxieties that a serial killer was at large. All the victims were young and had been attacked while walking home alone. All had either been strangled or had their throats cut. Soon a series of murders in another part of the city would cause even more panic among the residents of Moscow.

This second series of murders involved elderly victims who were attacked and murdered by a killer wielding a heavy metal instrument, which he used to crush their skulls. At the time, the police suspected that there were two different serial killers at work due to the two different profiles of victims and the two different killing methods used. As time progressed, the police remained clueless as to the identity of either killer or any possible motives.

It was not until June 2006 that the police finally made a breakthrough that would lead to the arrest and conviction of a killer who had been active since 1992. In June 2006, Moscow police investigated the murder of a 36-year-old female supermarket worker, Marina Moskalyova. Her body had been found in a local park near where she worked. Police enquiries at her home uncovered a note she had left her son, telling him that she was going out with a male co-worker by the name of Alexander Pichushkin (b. 1964). The note also contained his phone number. Police obtained CCTV footage from a train, which showed Pichushkin walking with the victim.

The police arrested Pichushkin at the apartment where he lived with his mother. He initially denied his involvement, but after he was shown the CCTV footage he started to confess, not only to the murder for which he was under arrest, but to other murders as far back as 1992. Following his confessions, he led police to some of the locations where he had hidden bodies. During the interviews that followed, he claimed to have murdered up to 62 people. He told police that his ultimate goal was to surpass the death toll of another Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, whose official murder count was 53. Pichushkin intended to kill 64 victims, to match the number of squares on a chessboard, which is why he became known as the Chessboard Killer.

He told police that with regard to the murder of Marina Moskalyova he had taken a risk, but stated that he had been in the mood for murder that night, so he just did it. During further interviews, he told investigators that he often targeted the elderly. He would invite his intended victim to drink with him in a secluded area of the park and, once they were drunk, he would crush their heads with a hammer or a metal pipe, then either leave them where they were or dispose of the bodies by dumping them in a sewer pit, sometimes alive but too inebriated to save themselves.

In his 2006 confession, televised to prove that it was not coerced, Pichushkin described his first murder, way back in 1992
when he was a teenager. (Coincidentally, this was the same year that Chikatilo was tried and convicted.) Pichushkin’s first victim was a young boy whom he’d pushed out of a window. Police had questioned Pichushkin but saw the case as suicide. It was nine years before he committed his next murder in 2001, and quickly achieved serial killer status with the slaying of many elderly people in a local park. He believed that he managed to evade detection because most of his victims were homeless people with no one to report them missing. Three survived his murder attempts, however, and one of them later identified Pichushkin as the perpetrator.

Following his arrest, Pichushkin was medically assessed and deemed fit to stand trial. He was charged with 49 murders and three attempted murders. At the 15-minute preliminary hearing on 13 August 2007, from a glass cage, he asked to be tried by a jury rather than before a panel of judges. His request was granted. The date set for the trial was 13 September 2007, and it would be open to the public. Pichushkin had admitted to 63 murders. However, the police had found no evidence to support a number that high, although when they searched Pichushkin’s home they found a drawing of a chessboard on which he had placed dates for 62 of the 64 squares.